Stargate Olympus
by NorJC
Summary: A few years after the disclosure of the Stargate program to the people of Earth, a powerful new Earth cruiser transports SG-1 to assist the planet Galar when a massive alien spacecraft suddenly appears out of nowhere near the Galaran homeworld. This story also has a few tidbits from the Bourne movie series.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Stargate Olympus  
Author: NorJC  
Crossover: Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica 2003  
Date began: July 30, 2015  
NOTICE: THIS STORY MAY BE DISTRIBUTED FREE OF CHARGE BUT MUST NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM. **

-COPYRIGHT/DISCLAIMER NOTICE-

 _"Battlestar Galactica"_ and all related material, its characters and certain technological devices and/or references to such, from the television shows and movies, may be or are registered trademarks of, and may be or are copyrighted by Glen Larson and whatever corporation it may or may not be owned by.

 _"Stargate SG-1,"_ and all related material, its characters and certain technological devices and/or references to such, may be or are registered trademarks of, and may be or are copyrighted by Double Secret Productions or Gekko Film Corporation.

No studio or publisher is responsible for the content of this story. Other names and additional characters are the creation of the author who is solely responsible for them as such.

 **THIS STATEMENT MUST ACCOMPANY THE STORY 'STARGATE OLYMPUS' IF DISTRIBUTED. THIS STORY IS FREE OF CHARGE AND MAY NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM.**

 **#**

 **Chapter 1**

"Captain, incoming message from Galar."

Captain Karen Willet, the mistress of the HMS _Endeavor_ , one of the fourteen _Discovery_ -class exploration cruisers of Earth's Homeworld Space Command, said crisply, "On screen, Commander Dacey, if you please."

Daniel Jackson, Stargate Command's Director of Extra-Terrestrial Affairs, watched as the image of a human male dressed in attire similar to a business suit worn by a Terran government official in either the United States or Europe flashed onto the screen. "Galar to _Endeavor_ , come in please. This is High Chancellor Tamor."

"Greetings High Chancellor," Daniel said.

"Dr. Jackson?" the man asked, his voice sounding both surprised and pleased. "They were able to send you to assist us with this crisis?"

Jackson smiled gently to the other man. "Yes, High Chancellor. My wife and I entered our Stargate and traveled to the planet where SGC had sent SG-1 to explore. Fortunately, the _Endeavor_ was on a mission of exploration nearby and picked us up. We're speeding toward your planet and should reach your world a few minutes from now."

"That is good news, Doctor, because the unidentified vessel currently intruding in our space has just launched several small craft. They have positioned themselves around the larger vessel in what appears to be a defensive formation."

Jackson simply nodded then asked, "Sir, is the unidentified vessel still broadcasting to you in the same language that was contained in the transmission you forwarded to Stargate Command?"

"The vessel has been doing so continuously, Doctor. I must confess that the men and women of our defense forces are quite alarmed by the fact that we have been unable to communicate with whomever is on that monstrous ship and I fear that it is growing more difficult for them to restrain themselves from firing on the invader!"

Jackson grimaced at that bit of information. He'd been on the mission when SG-1 had formed the alliance with Galar. In return for the memory enhancement tech that Galar had developed, Earth had provided the Galarans Goa'uld hyperspace engines, shields and plasma weaponry. Although the technology trade had given the Galarans the means to defend themselves from Goa'uld ha'taks and the like, their ships could not stand up to an attack from a Wraith cruiser or an Ori mother ship. Thus, when an unknown vessel had appeared out of nowhere near their planet, the shaken Galarans had immediately called upon the Taur'i to assist them in their time of need.

Now Daniel said, "I understand, sir. Perhaps if you tell your crews that I believe, based on the recording you'd sent us, we should be able to communicate with that intruding ship's crew, that should persuade your people to continue to hold their fire."

The other man smiled then. "I shall communicate your advice to our defense forces immediately, Dr. Jackson!"

"Dr. Jackson, High Chancellor," Willet announced, " _Endeavor_ should arrive in the Galar system in the next two minutes."

"Very good, Captain," the Galaran said. "On behalf of my people, Galar deeply appreciates the efforts of your valiant ship and her crew as well as the people of Earth in support of the alliance between our two worlds. Galar out."

As the image of the Galaran leader snapped off the screen to be replaced by the forward camera's view of the hyperspace tunnel that the _Endeavor_ was currently racing through, Jackson turned to the captain and noted, "Ten minutes from P3X-626 to Galar? I didn't know that the _Discovery_ -class ships were so much faster than the _Daedalus_ -class!"

Willet granted him a thin smile. She probably was deeply concerned about the challenge of the unknown ship they were about to face. "Actually, Dr. Jackson, as you probably well know, my ship was designed by both Dr. Carter and your teammate, Major Hailey, using the Asgard Knowledge Core, so her performance is more in line with that of the Asgard _O'Neill_ -class ships rather than the _Daedalus_ -class. I would speculate that the difference is due to the more restrained Asgard technology used for the _Daedalus_ -class ships' construction."

He then spied the pleased grin on the face of SG-1's XO, Major Jennifer Hailey and smiled.

Samantha Carter and Jennifer Hailey, perhaps the two brightest minds on Earth, had been hugely responsible for the rapid development of Earth's intergalactic fleet. Apparently, according to Sam, Jennifer and she had managed to trap the head of Homeworld Command, Lt. General Jack O'Neill, inside a conference room where the ladies had ambushed him with their ideas both about changing Earth's space warfare doctrine and warship designs. When they had reminded him of how Thor had dealt with the Goa'uld invasion on the planet Cimmeria nearly a decade ago, Jack had given them the go-ahead to start their new project.

By designing new vessels that had incorporated all of the advances the Asgard had gifted to Earth with the Knowledge Core when they'd chosen extinction for their race, the _Daedalus_ -class had become virtually obsolete overnight. Then a few days later, an off-world colony of survivors of Anubis' massacre of the Tollan race had decided to reach out to Earth and ask for SGC's help in building new ships to defend their colony. In return for Earth's assistance, the Tollans agreed to provide SGC with the technology to construct phase-shifting missiles.

That agreement served as icing on the cake for both Jennifer and Sam in the development of a new fleet of ships that would use Asgard Matter Conversion construction techniques and Tollan missile technology.

The new vessels, with the _Discovery_ -class exploration cruisers leading the way, soon became the most powerful warships in the known universe. The cruisers were constructed out of the same naquadah/trinium/carbon alloy used by the Asgard for the _O'Neill_ -class battleship. Powered by the incredible Asgard Neutron-Ion generators and armed with a wide array of plasma beam and ion cannons, nine transporter arrays that could sweep enemy fighters and missiles into nothingness, and phased naquadah/nuclear missiles, the Terrans had finally become the Fifth Race.

"Captain, preparing to disengage the hyperspace engines in thirty seconds."

"Very well, Bill," Willet said. Then she punched a button on her command counsel and activated the ship's intercom. "All hands, this is the captain. Standby for reentry into normal space in twenty seconds. That is all."

While the hyperspace tunnel began to break up in front of the vessel, Hailey appeared to notice that his attention was directed toward her. At that point, he nodded to her in tribute.

The diminutive woman who Jack habitually called "Carter's mini-me" currently stood in her usual spot between his wife, Vala Jackson, and Daniel's protégé, Captain Shannon Satterfield. Although both of the other women had about five inches on Hailey, she often kept them apart. Jennifer knew that her friend of Asian descent had still maintained a tiny crush on Daniel that had developed when Shannon had first come on board with SGC. Jennifer also realized that Vala, Daniel's newly wedded wife, knew about Shannon's crush and was a tad annoyed by that little fact. Although his wife and protégé tolerated each other and there had never been any open warfare between the pair, he was always appreciative of how Jennifer served the role as the demilitarized zone between Vala and Shannon.

Meanwhile, Teal'c simply stood beside his teammates, the large Jaffa appearing calm yet alert as always, while SG-1's leader, Colonel Paul Kane's countenance matched that of Teal'c. A year ago, Jack had promoted Cameron Mitchell to Brigadier General and had assigned Cam to lead Stargate Command after Hank Landry's retirement. Then he'd hand-picked Paul to take over the reins of SG-1. Although most people in the program were in the dark about the deceptively youthful looking man's past, Jack had once mentioned to Daniel that Kane was even more qualified for the position than Jack had ever been.

Coming from Jack, that was high praise indeed.

Moments later, Captain Willet's command voice derailed Daniel's musings. "Commander Halabi," she ordered, "raise shields, arm weapons and scan the system as soon as we exit hyperspace."

"Yes, ma'am," Lt. Commander Jane Halabi said. "Shields are up. Asgard beams, ion cannons, transporter arrays are on-line and operational. Phase missiles are loaded in tubes one through four, nuclear missiles are loaded in tubes five through eight. Conventional warheads are loaded in tubes nine through sixteen."

"Very good," the captain noted just as the _Endeavor_ emerged from hyperspace into the Galaran system with a flash.

"Scanning," Halabi announced. "Captain, there are three Galaran cruisers, two hundred thousand kilometers out. The intruder is twenty thousand kilometers beyond the cruisers facing them. Ma'am…the intruder…it's about half the length of our Thor-class battleships! I'm reading her as nearly six hundred fifty meters long!"

"Steady, Commander," Willet instructed. "What else do you see?"

"There are six small craft apparently providing a combat air patrol for the intruder. I suspect they're fighters, ma'am. They're approximately two-thirds the size of our F-302's."

"All right then. Commander Dacey," she said to the pilot, "take us directly between the cruisers and the intruder but let's not appear too aggressive with our approach. Dr. Jackson, are you certain you'll be able to communicate with the intruder?"

"Shannon and I believe so, Captain Willet. From what we can tell from the recording that the Galarans had sent to SGC, the people on that ship appear to be speaking the language of the Ancients. Fortunately both Shannon and I are fluent speakers."

"That may be true," Vala observed, "but considering how big that ship is and how nervous the Galarans are, I'd prefer if a veteran like Daniel does the talking to avoid having this thing turn into a shooting war with us smack dab in the middle of the ruckus."

As Satterfield shot a dirty look at his wife, he sighed heavily. Seconds later, he fought the urge to shrug and chuckled resignedly to himself. Although, at times, her direct and tactless nature annoyed the hell out of the rest of this teammates with the notable exception of Teal'c, and himself, Daniel had never wanted her to change who she was. Over the past few years, they'd grown to love each other deeply. Besides, her irreverent nature had soothed the ache he'd suffered after having lost his first wife nearly a decade ago.

Now he gave her a tiny smirk which he knew she found to be attractive and said, "Thanks for that vote of confidence, dear."

She shot him a sexy grin and drawled, "Any time, handsome."

Just then, Kane noisily cleared his throat. "Daniel? Diplomacy now, thank you."

"Indeed, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c agreed.

Despite the tense situation they all were facing, Willet had a bemused expression on her handsome face. Apparently, she'd heard about the…interesting personalities that made up SG-1. "Are you ready, Dr. Jackson?"

"Not really but I suppose there's no time like the present."

"Now, Doctor, I appreciate confidence in a man but I'd rather you don't get cocky," the captain quipped.

Satterfield then seemed to be in awe of the Englishwoman. "Wow, her sarcasm is really good! I think Captain Willet would be a great fit for SG-1!"

With a coy smirk on her face, the captain said to her weapon's officer, "Commander Halabi, please hail the intruder."

After pressing a several buttons on her control panel, Halabi announced, "Channel open, ma'am. It appears the intruder is receiving."

"Thank you, Commander." Then Captain Willet turned to Daniel and said, "Dr. Jackson…you're on."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 **Battlestar** ** _Valhalla_** **CIC – Unknown Stellar System**

"Linley, we don't have a few minutes, gods dammit! I need all the power you can muster for the weapons and I need it right frakking now!"

"Commander," Captain Frank Linley, the ship's chief engineer growled, "we're almost there, sir! The coolant pressure indicator has just reached the bottom of the scale. When it's in the yellow, I'll crash start the generators but you may want to cross your fingers when I throw the switch!"

"Give me your best guess for the generator start, Chief." Saundra Vergis, the _Valkyrie_ -class battlestar's commander demanded.

"Three minutes, maybe four, sir."

"You've got two minutes, Mr. Linley. I want us back in the game, by then. Vergis out."

She hung up the phone then she glanced at her XO, Alisander Hamilton. After they'd arrived wherever the hell they were and the old girl had lost power, the silence from the dead control panels had been so deafening, most of the CIC crew was still rattled. So, she'd started snapping orders far more than was normal for her to the point her voice had started to crack. Yet, she had to keep talking so her people could keep their heads in the game and their spirits up. "Colonel, the moment power is restored, have the gun crews load all cannons and missile tubes."

"Yes, sir!" he barked.

Then she whirled from her XO to glare at her Comms Officer, Lt. Sarah Bauer. "Comms, have those ships identified themselves yet?"

The young Caprican woman shook her head in frustration. "I truly can't say, Commander! I can't make heads nor tails out of any of their transmissions. I understand most Colonial dialects; however, none of these people are using any dialect from any of our Colonies. To my ears, these people are talking gibberish!"

Vergis grimaced. She didn't like the sound of that, not one bit. However, it was just icing on top of the piece of crap cake the Fates had served up to them on a silver platter, after their ship had misjumped and apparently dumped their asses into the middle of a clusterfrak of epic proportions.

According to her navcom officer, Lt. Naomi Asiel, the misjump had apparently been caused by several factors. First, they had a glitch in the system's firmware. Then the glitch had been exacerbated by the subatomic particles inside the nebula where they'd surveyed the last planet during their patrol of Neutral Space. The particles had overloaded their FTL drive, causing a feedback loop that cascaded through the ship's power grid.

A shiver then ran through Vergis' body. If the coolant system hadn't been up to snuff, the _Valhalla_ could have been blown to Hades.

However, instead of finding themselves relatively safe somewhere in deep space, the malfunction dropped them inside an uncharted planetary system. Said system appeared to have a Caprica-like world apparently guarded by at least three frigate-sized vessels, according to the meager data they could squeeze out of the DRADIS running on the ship's emergency battery power. Normally, the flotilla of small ships wouldn't have concerned Vergis in the slightest. Although the _Valkyrie_ -class battlestars weren't juggernauts like the _Mercurys_ , _Valhalla_ 's guns, along with the forty Vipers she carried, normally should have been more than enough to sweep the unidentified vessels from her sky.

'Normally,' of course, was the operative word. Without their power grid, though, they'd been kneecapped. Working solely off of emergency power, they'd only been able to launch the six Vipers that had been prepped and in the tubes prior to their ill-fated jump. At the moment, they were practically dead in the water. Their weapons were off-line and most of their systems were down, except for life support and communications.

Now she sighed heavily and turned to regard her Comms Officer. "Sarah, get me Midnight on the horn."

"Yes, sir," Bauer said crisply. "Commander, you're on."

" _Vahalla_ actual to Midnight. What's the word on our 'friends,' CAG."

 _"_ _Actual, there is no change in status. They are continuing to hold their positions. Actual, do you copy?"_

"We copy, Midnight," she said with a tiny smile on her face. Even though they were caught between a rock and a hard place until the power grid was restored, she counted herself fortunate that her CAG, Captain Joseph Stark, had been assigned to the combat air patrol they'd planned before the misjump. Stark was a rarity; he was an aggressive pilot who worked well with senior command and his pilots at all times. It also spoke well for the man that he always kept a cool head in all situations.

Her XO grunted and said lowly, "Well, thank Hera for small favors. At least whoever is on those ships out there haven't decided to toss any missiles our way for the moment."

"From your lips to Hera's ears, Sander," Vergis quipped. "Hopefully the fact we're a battlestar will keep them from firing on us for a few seconds more. I may like bluffing my ass off when I'm playing cards but I sure as hell don't enjoy having to do so when my ship is on the line."

 _"_ _Actual!"_ Stark blurted over the wireless. _"New contact, she's coming in like a frakking fury out of Hades! By the gods, I've never seen anything move so fast in my life!"_

"Midnight, this is Actual. What is the new contact doing?"

 _"_ _Actual, she's maneuvered between us and the other three ships."_

Vergis narrowed her eyes at her pilot's report. Something didn't feel right about this whole setup. If the other three ships had been waiting for the fourth's arrival before they decided to attack her ship, why in the hell would the new player place itself in the firing line?

"Commander!"

"What is it, Sarah?"

"Sir, the new contact…she's hailing us! And Commander, they speak our language!"

"Put them on the horn with me, Sarah."

"Yes, sir!"

Vergis brought the phone up to her face and said, "This is the Battlestar _Valhalla_ of the Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Please identify yourselves."

 _"_ _Are you the commanding officer of your vessel?"_ a man asked.

"I am Commander Vergis. To whom am I speaking?"

Suddenly, he spoke to her using what sounded like formal Caprican to Vergis' Tauron ears. _"Commander Vergis, my name is Dr. Daniel Jackson. I am speaking to you from aboard Her Majesty's Starship Endeavor. Our vessel represents a planet that is allied with the inhabitants of this system. When your vessel arrived in their space with no warning, they were understandably concerned. Can you communicate the purpose of your appearance close to their homeworld?"_

She blinked twice as she digested all that this Jackson fellow had told her. Apparently on his world, their people were ruled by a monarch just as Virgon had up until a century ago. Also, Jackson's planet had an alliance with the government of the people who lived in this system. Yet, how could a planet that had to be in some Neutral Space backwater and, at best, settled by a thousand or so Colonial separatists be allied with anyone? For that matter, what planet did Jackson call home if it wasn't located in the Twelve Colonies?

"Dr. Jackson, there are many things I'd like to have cleared up to my satisfaction; however, at the moment, my biggest concern is with the three vessels that had faced off against us right before your ship's arrival."

 _"_ _Well, Commander, your ship did intrude into their territory and due to the evident language barrier between them and you, I believe it is understandable the Galarans were alarmed by your ship's appearance in their system. Fortunately, they contacted my people in the hopes that we could resolve this matter before any shots were fired."_

"Dr. Jackson, can you please explain to me how these settlers can assert a claim that this space is their territory if we're in Neutral Space?"

The man paused for several moments before he spoke again. _"Commander Vergis…the Galarans have lived on their world for thousands of years. Their population is in the range of hundreds of million people. To my knowledge, no one has ever referred to their system as being a part of 'neutral space.' In fact, for many of those years, the planet Galar had been protected by an ancient spacefaring race under the terms of a document called the Protected Planets Treaty."_

While she considered the astounding information that Jackson had just presented to her, the overhead lights in the CIC grew bright and the hum of power surging through the consoles sounded throughout the large room.

"We're back in business!" Hamilton whispered enthusiastically.

Vergis then keyed her phone off for a moment while her XO used his phone to tell the gun captains to arm the guns and missile tubes. Then she turned to Asiel and snapped, "Lieutenant, scan the unknown ships. Start with the _Endeavor_ , the ship closest to us."

"Yes, sir," the lithe Aerilon woman responded. Moments later, with a stunned look on her face, Asiel stammered, "S-sir…by the gods…the scanner…i-it can't be right!"

Vergis stared down the younger woman. "What is it, Lieutenant. Spit it out!"

After she'd regained her composure, Asiel reported, "Sir, the _Endeavor_ …well, her power signature is off the charts! According to my readings, that single ship has more than enough juice to light up all of Caprica City! Also, sir, the computer has been unable to get a fix on our current position relative to either the Colonies or the border of Neutral Space. We're hell and gone from where we're supposed to be, Commander."

In response, Vergis said nothing. She simply nodded. Apparently, her battlestar was lost far, far from home. Somehow, her ship had inadvertently stumbled upon an uncharted star system that contained an inhabitable planet where untold millions of people were living…

Or were the people who lived on this world actually human beings?

She keyed her phone and asked, "Dr. Jackson, are you still there?"

 _"_ _I'm here, Commander Vergis."_

She sighed then asked, "Doctor, the Galarans…are they human beings?"

 _"_ _Of course, they're human beings," he answered. "Most of the sentient life-forms in our galaxy are either human, like your people, or an off-shoot of humanity."_

"How do you know we're human, Doctor?"

 _"_ _Why our sensing instruments showed us you're human, Commander. Our instruments have also indicated that your power generators are back on-line and you've armed all of your weapons."_

She closed her eyes and cursed to herself. _Frak! Their technology must be a lot better than ours for them to generate all that power and enable them to know so much about my ship's status!_

Quickly regaining her composure, Vergis said, "Dr. Jackson, we'd inadvertently jumped into the Galaran system due to a problem with our navigational computers. We apologize to the Galarans for any disruption we may have caused their society. We aren't looking for any trouble, we simply want to repair our ship and return home. Although it's true that we've armed our weapons, we will not fire on any vessel unless someone fires upon my ship."

 _"_ _That is good to know, Commander Vergis. I should inform you, for the sake of total transparency, that the Galaran vessels and the_ Endeavor _have activated their weapon systems but shall not fire upon your escorts or your ship so long as they do not advance toward their world or fire upon our vessels."_

"We appreciate the kind consideration given to us both by the Galarans and the commander of your ship, Dr. Jackson. We will follow your instructions to the letter. Moreover, after the repairs on my vessel have been completed I hope that we will have the opportunity to open a three-way dialog between my people, the Galarans, and your people, Doctor. Perhaps we could discuss the possibility of trade talks between our governments."

She smiled slyly, hoping the good doctor would take the bait she'd just offered. Up until now, the Valhalla's mission into Neutral Space had been a bust.

A year ago, Commander Adama and his crew on the _Galactica,_ had uncovered a plot by a Fleet Admiral to destroy a separatist settlement in Neutral Space to cover up a terrible crime. All the women in the settlement had been wiped out by an experimental bioweapon project funded by Colintel and the admiral had wanted a black ops ship to cover Colintel's dirty tracks. Several months ago, Exploratory Command had sent the _Valhalla_ into Neutral Space to scout for other separatist settlements and to see if there was any Cylon activity in the region. Although there probably wasn't much they could do to the Cylons for fear of jeopardizing the armistice, Command had wanted her ship to remove, if possible, any settlements. It seemed that Command didn't want any rogue colonies in the region that could expose Colonial citizens to predation by either Cylons or pirates.

However, Vergis mused, discovering two, technologically advanced human civilizations that could be potentially absorbed into the Twelve Colonies of Kobol would not only blow the Admiralty's collective minds but could lead to her promotion to rear admiral!

At that moment, Jackson derailed her thoughts when he said, _"We are happy to be of service to both the Galarans and you, Commander. I shall express your desire to open a dialog to the Galaran government and to my government as soon as possible."_

"Thank you, Dr. Jackson. Oh, and Doctor, I hope it wouldn't offend your government if I were to ask you the name of the planet you represent."

 _"_ _I don't see any harm in providing you with that information, Commander. I am from the planet Earth."_

Except for the electrical hum of the machines in the CIC, silence reigned for several moments before Colonel Hamilton muttered lowly the two words that were on the minds of every person in the room.

"Frak me."

#


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

 **Battlestar Valhalla – Commander Vergis' Office**

"I'm not sure you should be the one to go, Saundra. A battlestar needs her commander."

Vergis turned from checking her uniform in her mirror to give her XO a melancholy smile. "Sander, I have to go. It was my ship that intruded into the Galarans' space. It's my responsibility and I'm the one who has to be accountable for her."

"That may be the case but we know nothing about the people on that Earth ship. Maybe they are on the up and up. However, I believe you're taking an awful risk."

She squeezed his left shoulder gently. "Sometimes, you've got to roll the hard six, Sander."

He grunted and nodded reluctantly. "Even so, I'm not happy they don't want you and Asiel to go over there without your sidearms."

"Sander, they've guaranteed our safety. Besides, they have a Galaran civilian government official meeting with us, too. If we bring our sidearms, it might send the wrong message to the Galarans. However, I'm not worried about it."

"Why not?"

She grinned. Because I know if they get out of line, I've got you and the _Valhalla_ to drag our sorry asses out of the furnace!"

He chuckled and said, "Saundra, don't take this the wrong way, but you've got some stones on you!"

"I choose to take that as a compliment, my friend," she drawled.

#

 **Battlestar Valhalla – Port Hangar Bay**

"Commander Vergis, Lieutenant Asiel," Lt. Roland "Halo" Janik, _Raptor_ 497's pilot asked, "are you certain you don't want to put on your flight helmets?"

"Since their ship isn't that far away, Wheel, we'll skip 'em. Naomi and I don't want to show up at the meeting looking like we have cats on our heads!"

Janik laughed heartily at the commander's little joke. He knew her decision had nothing to do with vanity."

Both women wore their hair short, as was the custom of most female pilots stationed on battlestars. So the helmets wouldn't have messed up their hairstyles too badly.

Halo now turned his attention to his clipboard and he ran through his checklist. Afterwards, he gazed at the deck chief through his windshield and held up three fingers spread wide. Moments later, the deck crew hooked his craft up to a small tractor. The machine towed his craft onto one of the elevator pads, disengaged and drove away.

Seconds later, he saluted the deck chief, who returned his salute and indicated to his crew to activate the elevator. When the lift raised his craft into the vacuum of the launch bay, he keyed his mike and said, "Flight Control, this is Halo. Request permission to depart port launch bay, over."

 _"_ _Halo, this is Flight Control. You are go for launch."_

He disengaged the grapples, allowing the _Raptor_ to float above the surface of the deck. Janik then activated his aft thrusters and sent his craft hurtling across the deck and out into space.

"Flight Control, we have cleared the bay, over."

 _"_ _Affirmative, Halo. Safe journey."_

"Copy that, Flight Control. Halo over and out."

Minutes later, the _Endeavor's_ Flight Control contacted him. When they gave him landing instructions, he changed course and steered his ship under the keel of the much larger Earth vessel. Soon, he saw an open ramp that appeared to lead into a large hangar bay. It was then when he noticed a hazy screen of what appeared to be an energy field of some kind across the opening.

"Flight Control, this is Halo. There appears to be some sort of energy field across the hangar bay entrance. Should I proceed into the bay? Please advise, over."

 _"_ _Halo, the energy field will neither harm your passengers nor your ship. Please proceed into the hangar bay, over."_

"All right," he muttered lowly. "Here we go."

He lined up his craft with the flashing parallel row of lights both on the ramp and the hangar bay floor. Moments later, his ship penetrated the screen without incident. The Picon native felt the _Raptor_ pull down toward the surface of the deck due to the larger vessel's artificial gravity field. He compensated for the effect and turned his ship toward a square surrounded by oscillating lights. Janik then set his craft gently down inside the square.

Once the ramp raised to close the bay from the vacuum of space, Roland determined the bay was pressurized to one standard atmosphere and the air outside was breathable. Suddenly a beam of bright light flashed from somewhere overhead and swept through his Raptor. He keyed his mike and asked, "Flight Control, can you tell me about the light I just saw?"

 _"_ _Halo, that light was just our bio-filter to ensure no harmful bacteria could be passed from your people to ours. Everyone on this ship has undergone the same process to protect your people from anything that could be carried by us, over."_

"Copy that," he said. "We are now preparing to exit our craft, over."

 _"_ _Acknowledged. Dr. Jackson and his party will meet you in the hangar bay shortly. Flight Control, over and out."_

Now Janik switched off his wireless controls, unfastened his safety harness, went aft, and cracked the hatch open.

He clambered onto the _Raptor's_ short wing and down onto the deck, immediately followed by Lt. Asiel then Commander Vergis.

Soon, a party of four marched toward them. Two men were in the lead. One was dressed in light blue coveralls and he wore a pair of eyeglasses on his face. The other man appeared to be garbed in a suit that wouldn't have looked out of place in Caprica's government circles. The men were followed by two women garbed in the same light blue coveralls as the man with the eyeglasses. One was at least a head shorter than the other; however, Roland didn't really have the opportunity to give the smaller woman a good look see because her companion had captured his undivided attention.

"By the gods…" he muttered when he realized the taller woman possessed the same tanned skin, dark hair, exotic almond-shaped eyes, and both the lovely face and figure the gods had granted to Lt. Naomi Asiel.

At that moment, the _Endeavor_ people stared at Asiel.

Meanwhile, the Commander, Asiel and he stared at Asiel's twin.

Then the man in the coveralls quirked his right eyebrow and quipped to Asiel's double, "Shannon, did your mother forget to mention that you had a twin sister who happened to live on another planet?"

In response, Asiel's double narrowed her eyes at the lieutenant and snorted, "Never mind that," she growled to the man then turned to Valhalla's navigation officer and demanded, "what in the hell did you do to our hair?!"

#

 **HMS Endeavor – Conference Room D**

After Daniel was able to calm everyone down and assure the Colonial commander that Shannon had not been surgically altered to impersonate and replace Lt. Asiel for nefarious purposes, he'd managed to guide their wary guests to one of the ship's conference rooms.

Waiting in the room for them on the large center table were translating devices that Jennifer Hailey had created by using the Asgard core and the trans-mat. The devices could be placed over the shell of a person's ear and positioned a powerful mini-microphone near an individual's lips. Once everyone was situated, Hailey continued trying to soothe the nerves of the shaken Colonial officers.

"I believe," she said, "the situation we have here with your Lt. Asiel and our Captain Satterfield is simply a freak occurrence involving genetics. There are only so many combinations of human DNA that can occur before nature produces a close duplicate of an individual."

"I see," Commander Vergis said in the way that Jackson suspected she'd only had made the statement because she had not wanted to tell Hailey that she'd had no idea what the smaller woman was talking about.

"Commander Vergis," he said in an attempt to get the meeting back on track, "after we were able to assure one another that no one had wanted to launch an attack on anyone, you told me that your people believe that Earth was settled by your ancestors from your society's homeworld. Can you expound upon that for us, please?"

"Of course, Dr. Jackson. Lt. Asiel," the woman said to Satterfield's twin, "please tell them about the exodus of the Thirteenth Tribe."

"Yes sir. Our most sacred scrolls tell us that on the planet Kobol, the cradle of humanity, there were thirteen tribes of mankind who lived with the Lords of Kobol, the gods who created man and woman in their image. According to the scriptures, four thousand years ago, the Thirteenth Tribe struck out on its own and settled on the planet Earth which circled a distant star. Unfortunately, the scriptures are silent about why the members of that tribe had decided to leave Kobol."

"For another two thousand years, the remaining twelve tribes continued to live with the Lords on Kobol. Then came a day when the bickering and violence between the tribes had caused the gods to grow weary of the presence of man. Thus, the gods drove the Twelve Tribes from Kobol to another star system where they'd prepared a place for us. That system turned out to be a double binary system with twelve inhabitable planets and moons."

"After our ancestors had relocated to the new system, our people lost touch with the brothers and sisters of the Thirteenth Tribe. Until now, the existence of your planet had been lost to the ravages of time."

Jackson simply nodded and said nothing as he tried to process the story Asiel had just told them. Suddenly, he experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and he lamented to himself that, somehow, some way, it was probable that two dire events would occur.

First, the conflict between the Colonials' religious beliefs and the truth about humanity's origins would most likely bite them all in the ass in the end.

Second, Jack would find a way to blame the whole mess on him.

Pressing on, Daniel sighed deeply and said, "Although no one in the field of anthropology on Earth has come across any references concerning either Kobol or the Tribes of Man to my knowledge, we assure you we will seriously look into the matter to determine if we can corroborate your claims from our historical records. From your account, though, it doesn't appear that the Lords of Kobol behaved in the depraved manner of an alien species that had passed themselves off as ancient gods from Earth."

"Wait a minute," Vergis snapped, "are you saying that these creatures impersonated Zeus, Athena and the other Lords?"

Jackson nodded. "Yes. I have actually met one who'd claimed to be Athena. Some of these aliens have claimed to be other gods as well." Daniel had decided to be careful in disclosing that the parasites had been quite liberal in stealing from many of Earth's ancient cultures and their many gods, divine beings who were not the gods that Ancient Greece, and, apparently, the Colonials, had revered. "These creatures call themselves the Goa'uld. The Goa'uld were a technologically and socially more advanced species than our ancestors on Earth thousands of years ago."

Asiel nodded at that. "That is not surprising, Dr. Jackson. After the Twelve Tribes had arrived in the new system, our ancestors lost much of their technology when they'd settled on Gemenon, the First Colony. It took hundreds of years before we'd regained the knowledge of space flight and subsequently settled the other eleven inhabitable planets and moons in our system."

"I see," he said, filing away the knowledge that the Colonials had been able to travel through space for a far longer time than most human societies in the Milky Way. "Well, a Goa'uld is a parasitic life form that is similar in appearance to serpents in their native form. Any one of these parasites can use anyone they'd encountered as a living host."

The blood drained from Vergis' face at that unpleasant news. "A host?"

Lan Taran, the Galaran envoy, next took up the thread. "A Goa'uld invades its victim's body and winds itself around his or her spine and cerebral cortex. From there, the creature entirely submerges the victim's personality and takes complete control over that individual. With the assistance of their then superior technology, the Goa'uld converted other humans they'd abducted into an enhanced humanoid they used as their soldiers and enforcers. These people are called the Jaffa."

"The rest of the human abductees? The Goa'uld would take them from Earth and seed them on other inhabitable planets to be used as slave labor to support the Goa'uld System Lords," Shannon Satterfield explained. "To maintain their control over their slaves, the Goa'uld had forbidden, upon pain of death, the offspring of the abductees from ever learning or using the language of their homelands."

Janik's face clearly showed the outrage he apparently felt concerning the crimes of the Goa'uld. "How did you deal with those frakking things?" the pilot asked.

"Thousands of years ago," Jackson said, "one of the ancient nation states on Earth had amassed enough power to lead a rebellion against the System Lord who'd controlled Earth. He abandoned the planet, cutting off all contact with Earth. After that, our planet was able to develop on its own without any outside interference. There also had been a few worlds where the Goa'uld slaves had either driven the aliens off or had been abandoned by the Goa'uld after the planets' resources had run dry. They also were allowed to create their own societies without any interference from the snakes. However, there were many worlds that were under the protection of a powerful and ancient race of aliens that even the Goa'uld feared to challenge."

Jackson paused momentarily to take a sip of water from his glass. Then he said, "About twenty years ago, Earth inadvertently reengaged with the Goa'uld. Fortunately, we made contact with the ancient race of aliens who was the snake's sworn enemy. We also managed to find several worlds like Galar that provided us with technology we could use in our war against the Goa'uld System Lords. After ten years of desperate struggle and sacrifice, we destroyed all of the old System Lords. Although the Goa'uld, as a species, still exists, their power over humanity has been shattered, hopefully, for good. And thanks to the ancient alien race that had become both friend and ally to us, we gained a number of technological advances that allowed Earth to take up the mantle for the other race. That race had protected many primitive human societies from further exploitation by the Goa'uld, allowing them to develop at their own pace. The people of Earth take our responsibility quite seriously concerning the worlds under our protection. We shall not allow anyone to exploit them in any way, shape or form."

Vergis gave him a sober look then. _Good,_ Jackson mused. _They need to know we're as serious as a heart attack if they stumble about the galaxy and try to take advantage of any of the planets governed by the Protected Planets Treaty._

"Dr. Jackson," she said, "thank you for your report on the Goa'uld. Perhaps, our location in the galaxy was so far off of their DRADIS screens, we had the good fortune of avoiding any contact with them."

He snorted. "Lucky you."

When she shot a questioning look his way, he sighed. "I apologize for that, Commander. You see, people I cared about and loved, an entire world that had taken me in and given me a home, were completely destroyed by the Goa'uld."

Vergis shook her head. "No apologies are necessary, Doctor. We Colonials also have suffered gravely, except our nemesis hadn't been an alien species; we'd faced extinction as the result of our own hubris. More than forty years ago, a team of scientists had created cybernetic servants we'd used to tackle the jobs that were too dangerous for man. Somehow, these robots had developed into sentient beings that saw themselves as nothing more than slaves to humanity. These robots, who we call Cylons, rebelled against us and had tried to destroy every human being on all the colonies. Nearly a billion people died during the war that had lasted twelve long years. That war had ended when both sides signed an armistice. Once the boundaries between our space and the space controlled by the Cylons had been negotiated, every Cylon had left our space for their own territory. In the thirty nine years since then, we have neither seen any signs of them nor have we heard a word from them."

"We've heard similar stories from other races we've encountered," Major Hailey said. "Those races also had incidents where the artificial life forms those societies had created to protect the societies from external threats had seen themselves as little more than slaves. These life forms had all rebelled and had become a threat to the societies that had birthed them."

"So, we're not the only people in the galaxy who've almost been hoisted on their own petards, eh?" Vergis quipped.

Jackson smiled gently. "No, Commander. We've nearly cooked our own goose a number of times."

"The same holds true for the people of Galar," Laran admitted.

"And some of the more advanced races from antiquity, including our ally which helped us defeat the Goa'uld, faced disasters of their own making that had nearly wiped them all out," Satterfield added.

"That's good to know," the commander said. "Although it appears you've effectively addressed your Goa'uld problem, I'm concerned by the possibility that if you ever encounter the Cylons, they would probably associate you with the humans of the Colonies and attack you all. If so, your military forces may not be capable of defending you against them. You see, their capital ships, which they call 'base stars,' are nearly as big as our largest capital ships, which are more than twice the size of mine. The Cylons are also armed with nuclear as well as conventional missiles. To help prepare your people in the event you ever run across the Cylons, I would be willing to approach the Colonial fleet admiralty about providing military assistance to your governments."

No one said anything for a few moments. Then Laran said, "Commander, I have a question I would like to ask, if I may."

"Please do, Envoy Laran."

"Thank you, Commander. I was wondering…do the Cylons and your fleet use energy shields on your larger capital ships while you both simply rely on anti-missile cannon and armor for your smaller vessels to defend against the low yield nuclear warhead yields you both apparently use in combat?"

When an apparently gobsmacked Vergis simply blinked thrice and didn't utter a sound in response to Laran's question, five words came to Daniel's mind at that point in time.

 _Jack's going to kill me!_

#

 _I very thankful about the wonderful reviews this story has received! If you haven't had the opportunity to provide a review, please be so kind to do so. They help keep me on track and help improve the story. As always, reviews and you, the reader, are always appreciated!_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

 **Washington, D.C. – The Hub Data Room**

" _Endeavor_ , this is the Hub. What is your status?"

Pamela Landy the Executive Director of Homeworld Command's Counterintelligence department, hovered behind the two techs who manned the communications consoles while her 2IC, Tom Cronin, quarterbacked the operation they'd practically cooked up on the fly.

A thin smile crossed her lips when she noticed the serious look on Tom's face. Even though their operations were much more low-key than the rats' nest they'd endured during their time at the CIA, Tom's stone-cold façade almost never changed. During the two decades they'd worked together, she could only recall a single instance when he'd been flustered.

That had been when she'd confided in him that she'd provided the address for the Treadstone rogue operation to Jason Bourne.

Now, she coolly presided over their operation like a spider in the center of a web of wondrous communication, employing technology no one on Earth could possibly have ever dreamed of using until the fateful day that Jack O'Neill had given her career a new lease on life.

 _"_ _Hub,"_ the captain of the _Endeavor_ said to Cronin, _"we are on hot standby. We have inserted the subspace tracking device inside a working model of one of their running light housings that my chief engineer cooked up with our Asgard trans mat device. Please be advised Colonel Kane awaits Final Green."_

Landy smirked. Leave it to David Webb to have suggested using a running light to plant a subspace tracking device that ran on a naquadah power-cell on the Colonial warship. However, it really shouldn't have surprised her. Considering the ruthless Darwinian culling of Treadstone that David had survived, his talent for thinking-outside-the-box was the primary reason he was still alive.

David, the man she'd first known as Jason Bourne, now called himself Paul Kane. Paul, at that very moment, was many light years distant from Earth, preparing to enter the cold depths of space at her command.

Considering what they'd gone through together seven years ago, Pam much preferred working with him than against him.

Now Cronin flashed her a look. She nodded and just as she was about to start the operation, a telephone ringer chirped, its sharp and brittle sound incongruous to the oppressive darkness that encompassed the operations room.

Kim answered the phone, listened carefully for a moment then turned to Landy. "It's General O'Neill."

Pam blinked twice and took the phone from the younger woman. "Jack?"

 _"_ _I'm here at HQ. Sam's with me. She's a little worried that if we screw this thing up, it'll come back and bite us in the ass."_

Pam narrowed her eyes in annoyance at Carter's handwringing. _It figures,_ she mused inwardly. _Leave it to Mary Poppins to get cold feet at a time like this._

Of course, Jack, given his black ops history, understood the necessity for the operation. After she'd briefed both Jack and Sam about what the Colonial commander had said about the Cylons and her fleet's battlestars, it should have been apparent to even the most naïve government operative that they needed substantive intelligence on these people yersterday.

"Sam," she now said, "we've been over this. Willet's people are certain the Colonials don't use subspace for anything."

 _"_ _But…what if they find the tracking device somehow?"_

"They won't. There won't be anything left behind to connect the operation to us. We're employing a failsafe. If a single bolt is loosened after we've installed the housing or if anyone exposes the damn thing to an x-ray machine, all of the beacon's discrete parts will fuse into an unrecognizable lump of metal."

 _"_ _Sam,"_ Jack said, _"even if half of the things this Vergis woman has said is the truth, we need to locate their point of origin and send the_ Blackbird _to gather intelligence about their military capabilities and their society. I mean, if they're all as eager as Vergis to come out of their crib with their big honkin' ships and put on their big boy pants, we need to know a whole hell of a lot more about them."_

Eager to get the show on the road, Pam snapped, "Look, Willet is about to put Paul into play. Quite honestly, there's not much more to talk about."

She heard Jack sigh deeply over their connection. _"All right, Pam…your game, your call."_

She allowed herself a tiny smile of triumph then. It was a rare day that anyone could get Jack to see things differently than his wife. "Thank you, Jack. Goodbye."

After she'd switched off the phone, she whirled to face Tom. "Go," she said.

He nodded and triggered his microphone. " _Endeavor_ , this is the Hub. Final Green, you are go. Repeat, you are go for Final Green."

 _"_ _Final Green,"_ Willet answered from light years away, _"is acknowledged. We are go. Kane is in play."_

While all eyes were on their monitors, Pamela Landy leaned over Kim's shoulder and stared into the younger woman's monitor. "Now…we wait," she muttered.

#

 **Galaran Space – Outside of Battlestar Valhalla**

Paul Kane found himself lost in an insurmountable immensity.

Kane hovered close to the forward hull plate of the Colonial vessel's port side hangar bay after the _Endeavor_ had beamed him out into space. Harsh light spilled over the top of the _Valhalla_. Galar's sun was visible through his reflective visor, brilliant against the backdrop of the dark gray battlestar.

When he'd found the running light housing that was his target, he aimed his stubby-line shooter at a spot on the hull nearby. A tether unreeled from the spool on the shooter, tipped by a powerful adhesive on a patch that was designed to work in a vacuum and adhere to anything it hit. The SG-1 leader yanked the rope hard to make certain the tether was firmly attached before he used the device to reel him toward the housing.

As soon as he was within ten meters of the hull, his space suit's active camo coating reflected the grays and blacks of his surroundings, practically rendering him invisible to any of the Colonial pilots who were flying the Combat Air Patrol near their ship.

In moments, the side of the ship was dead ahead, looming above him like a mountain suspended in the depths of outer space. Its gargantuan stature gave Kane a sense of scale to his surroundings, making him feel like an ant creeping toward a mammoth boulder.

Once he'd positioned himself beside the running light, he switched on his outer helmet lights so he could see what he needed to do to get the job done. With his right hand, he unhooked the D-ring that held his universal wrench. He turned on the tool's heating element before he placed the round head over the first bolt that attached the original housing to the hull. He then flicked the toggle that allowed the wrench to ratchet down where its teeth could hold the head of the bolt tight.

It took him only a minute or so to loosen the first bolt. Kane carefully placed the fastener inside his right hip pocket while making certain the Velcro flap was closed before he tackled the next one.

As he continued to work, he wondered how Daniel would react when he found out they had attached a tracking device to the Colonial ship. At first, their Chief Anthropologist would probably be a little upset about the idea of Earth using surveillance to get a handle on the Colonials. Kane, though, considering his intelligence background, had absolutely no problem with it. Besides, once General O'Neil and Teal'c discussed the matter with the man and Vala comforted and have her wicked way with him, Daniel would get over it. Although his teammate was an idealist, the Goa'uld and the Ori had made Daniel see that sometimes the ends justified the means.

Kane, Landy and O'Neill all agreed they had to find the Colonials' home system and dispatch a stealth surveillance ship there to ferret out as much as they could about their culture. Given their apparent lack of knowledge about the state of the galaxy, they needed intelligence to determine whether these people could potentially threaten the worlds that Stargate Command had sworn to protect on behalf of the Asgard. Failing to do so, to O'Neill, be seen as a betrayal of the trust Thor's people had placed in the Taur'i.

Once the last bolt was unfastened and carefully placed in his Velcro-lined pocket, Kane carefully lifted the housing from its place and peered into the Colonial light fixture. There were two wires, one each connected to tabs on opposing sides inside the housing. One wire was yellow; the other was purple.

He balanced the fixture against his left leg and drew his multimeter from a pouch on his right torso. He used the device to determine which wire was positive so the faux housing's light would work just like the original bulb. Once he determined the positive current flowed through the yellow wire, Kane put away the instrument then withdrew his wire cutter from another pocket.

He snipped both wires, placed the cutter back inside his pocket, and attached the Colonial housing to an empty D-ring on the work harness of his suit. Then he pulled out the wire cutter once more and used the tool to strip a piece of the plastic coating from each wire.

Now he disconnected the housing that the Endeavor's chief engineer had fabricated from one of his D-rings and attempted to connect the small portion of naked wire attached to the faux housing's positive terminal to the Colonial's positive wire. He could feel the clammy beads of sweat on his forehead in spite of the environmental systems of his suit while he struggled against the clumsiness of his gloves and gauntlets to wind the wires tight.

After Kane had made the connection, he tested it and found that it held firm. He released a heavy sigh then winced. "Oww!" he complained as he flexed his fingers to try and ease some of the cramping.

He rested a minute or so, waiting for a little relief from the pain. Then he repeated the process he'd used before to connect the negative wires together.

Once again, he tested the connection. Again, it held.

This time, Kane didn't stop to rest. He drew one of the bolts out of his Velcro pocket and began to fasten the housing that contained the subspace tracker that their resident mad scientists, Samantha Carter and Jennifer Hailey, had cooked up to the original housing's mounting plate. Kane grinned. Although most people found Jen a bit...abrasive, he admired her bluntness. With Jen, what you saw was what you got. She didn't have a diplomatic bone in her body but he always knew where he stood with her and she was always straight with him. Plus, she was intimidatingly smart and as General O'Neill had once confided to him when the elder man and he had shared a beer together a few months ago, "You know, Paul, smart chicks are hot. Hell, that's why I was so damn attracted to Sam the first time I laid eyes on her all those years ago!"

As was the case with O'Neill and Sam while they'd worked together on SG-1, he couldn't consider pursing Jen romantically. Even so, it couldn't hurt to dream about the possibility once in awhile, he mused.

Minutes later, he was installing the last bolt when he spied a spot of light on the hull twenty meters in front of him. Glancing off to the side, he saw the light originated from the front of one of the Colonial fighter craft.

Kane's eyes narrowed. _What in the hell is that pilot searching for?_

He pondered that question for a few moments. Perhaps she or he had spotted the flash from the _Endeavor's_ transporter effect when it had beamed him into the space near the pilot's mothership, he speculated.

Reverting back to his Treadstone training, he pushed aside any fear or concerns about being discovered out of his mind and focused on completing the mission. He tightened the last bolt down then squeezed the wire cutter as hard as he could, hoping to sever the tether line just above its attachment to the adhesive patch.

While the light crept closer to his position, Kane fought both to break the line and against the immense pain in his tired hand. Even though, theoretically, his camo suit shouldn't be susceptible to discovery by the search light, Kane didn't want to chance having the whole operation blown by a nosey pilot.

Suddenly,the line snapped. Due to the force he applied to break the connection, Kane found himself floating away from the battlestar's hull. Fortunately, he'd managed to maintain his grip on the wire cutter, leaving only a small patch behind on the surface of the hull.

When he drifted past the cockpit of the Colonial fighter craft, he activated his own subspace beacon.

Moments later, he was surrounded by a shimmering light.

Then he was gone.

#

When Kane had materialized inside the _Endeavor's_ transporter room, both Captain Willet and the chief engineer began to remove his helmet and gauntlets. While the two women labored to assist him, he noticed Pam Landy's face on the large monitor on the wall.

 _"_ _How did it go, Paul?"_ the intelligence director asked.

"It's installed and ready to go."

Pam nodded. _"Good. Any problems?"_

He only paused for a moment before he answered her. "No."

Then over the intercom, a woman's voice announced, _"Bridge to Captain Willet."_

Willet punched a button on the transport device's console. "Willet here."

 _"_ _Ma'am, the subspace tracker is up and running."_

"Splendid, Bridge! Thank you for your report. Willet out."

Pam apparently had overheard the bridge officer's statement because he saw a thin smile cross her lips. _"Good work, Paul."_

In response, he simply nodded and said, "Thanks, Pam. Now that the op is over, I think you should go home and get some rest. You look tired."

When she had apparently recalled the advice he'd once given her seven years ago when she was hunting him, she smiled broadly, well… broadly for 'serious-as-a-heart-attack' Pamela Landy. _"I think I'll take you up on your offer this time…Paul."_

#


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

 **Unknown Planet Outside the Edge of Neutral Space**

"How in the frak did these humans come to be on this One-God-forsaken planet out in the middle of nowhere?"

Diana Biern, a Number Three Cylon blessed with long brunette hair had posed the question to the other members of her scouting party. She was designed to pass for a tall and athletic looking human female. Now, she stood alert at the head of her team on the top of a large hill. At that moment, she gazed down into an open pit mine protected from the harsh light of the system's orange star by a gigantic canopy. Inside the huge crater in the surface of the planet were hundreds of humans digging with hand tools powered only by their sinews.

"Is this some kind of…Colonial penal colony?" a lost at sea Leonardo Conoy asked. "Do you think the _Valhalla_ came all the way out here to check on these people?" Leo was one of the Number Two models. He looked like a ruggedly handsome, fairly tall human with spiky blonde hair.

Diana frowned. After the loss of a platoon of Centurions to the crew of the battlestar _Galactica_ in Neutral Space a year ago, the Cylons had been determined to track any ship the Colonials had sent into that sector to see if the humans had established new colonies that needed to be accounted for in the list of targets once the Cylons implemented their 'Plan' to erase humanity from existence.

A month ago, their base star had begun to shadow the Colonial's _Valkyrie_ -class scout ship and had done so for nearly the entire time the battlestar had prowled through Neutral Space. However, somehow, the _Valhalla_ had eluded them during her last jump.

Even after their base star had jumped along the missing ship's last heading as far as their hybrid had dared, there had been no sign of the Colonial warship. Instead, the Cylons had stumbled across a star system which had a planet in the habitable zone for human life forms. After the base star had achieved orbit above the planet, its scout Raiders discovered signs of human habitation on the surface.

Then her train of thought was suddenly derailed when Simon Bell observed, "I don't believe so, Two. There's no indication the battlestar has even been to this system. Besides, the settlement nearby appears to have been here for centuries. Also," the Number Four who could have passed for a Gemenon native noted, "these people appear to be quite primitive. Could it be that these people are the predecessors of a portion of a Kobolian tribe that had been separated from the others during the Exodus and had lost all of their technology when they'd settled here?"

Diana had no answer for her brother. "Perhaps," she murmured.

"What now?" inquired Naomi Valeris. She was a Number Eight, a model created to pass for one of the more exotic natives of Aerilon. On this mission, she was their pilot.

Naomi had flown them down to the surface and had landed the Heavy Raider in a clearing amidst a grove of trees close to a large pyramid-shaped building that seemed to be far less primitive and more substantial than the structures they'd seen in the settlement. After they'd landed, the four humaniform Cylons had armed themselves with assault rifles, side arms, and communicators. Then Diana had ordered six of the Centurions that had accompanied them to enter and examine the pyramid while the other six were directed to remain with the Heavy Raider.

Now Diana silently regarded the other woman for a moment. Then she shrugged. _They wouldn't get any answers if they simply stood on the top of this frakking hill all day,_ she mused to herself. "Well…" she drawled, "I think we should just go down there," she indicated with a sweep of her hand toward the pit, "and say 'hello!'"

Now the landing party jogged down the slope and when it approached the mine, everyone in the pit stopped working. At first, no one moved. Then a heavily soiled young man strode toward the Cylons, appearing to be enthralled by their appearance.

Diana studied the man, actually, practically a boy, for a moment before she forced a smile for the disgusting creature's benefit. _He's human, after all_ , she observed as she buried her hatred for their former Colonial masters deep inside her cognitive processors.

"Hello," she said, attempting to sound amiable.

In response, the young man grinned broadly then turned around and shouted words to the other workers in a language the Cylons struggled to comprehend. Immediately after he'd finished speaking, all the men prostrated themselves on the ground, shortly followed by the young man who flung himself down at their feet.

"Diana," Leo asked, "what in the frak did he just say to these men? I only caught fragments of it."

Diana and her sisters were designed to be both interrogators and the historians of their race. And as a historian, she recognized ancient Kobolian when she heard it.

"He said, we're the 'Sky People,'" she interpreted for her comrades.

The four gobsmacked Cylons stood frozen in place for a minute or so. Then she murmured in his language, "Please…rise and face us."

Moments after he'd stood up, an elder man garbed in a simple robe pushed through a crowd of men an approached them. When the young man saw the elder man, he pointed to the old man, apparently indicating that Diana should converse with the newcomer. While the three talked to elder, the boy shot a lingering glance at Naomi. When the Eight studied him intensely, he blushed.

Meanwhile, both Leo and Simon tried yet failed to suppress their chuckles when they noticed the effect she had on the young human male.

In response, Naomi glared at her two brothers then turned to the young man, smiled at him, reached into her jacket's breast pocket and drew out a ration bar. Then she unwrapped it and offered it to him.

At first, he seemed confused. Yet, moments later, he took the proffered bar and sniffed it before he tasted it. Almost immediately thereafter, he smiled back at the Eight.

#

Diana then approached her sister and smirked. "Isn't it common knowledge that you shouldn't feed the animals, Eight? If you're not careful, they could turn on you and eat you alive!"

Naomi narrowed her eyes at the Three. "I'm surprised at you, Diana. Don't you think it's better to put our best foot forward at the moment since there's only four of us and hundreds of them?"

The other woman studied her for a moment before she sighed. "You're right, Naomi. I'll follow your example…for now." Then she shot a look at Simon, Leo then her. "The old man wants us to follow his people back to their settlement. I've notified the Centurions to remain in place but to maintain wireless contact with us."

Moments later, they were marching with all of the people from the pit across a broad grassy plain. While Diana walked beside the elder and a young woman who'd given them all a ladle of cool water strode alongside Leo, the young man ambled in step with her.

After they'd traveled on foot for thirty minutes, the mass of people approached an impressive stone wall nearly five meters tall. Behind the wall, she could see the tops of many stone buildings.

Soon the procession passed through a square portal in the wall into the settlement proper. Several minutes later, they came to a halt in an open section of the town where a crowd of people had seemed to be waiting for their arrival. The elder then presented them to the crowd. Shortly thereafter, everyone prostrated themselves in homage to the four Cylons while they all chanted the same words over and over.

"They're all saying…'praise be to Dias,'" Diana murmured lowly.

She shot an uncertain look at the Three. "Who or what is Dias?"

Her normally confident, bordering on arrogance, sister appeared to be unnerved by their current situation. "That's the old name for Zeus, the Kobolian Lord of the Sky, long before the Thirteenth Tribe had ever left the Kobol."

"So," Simon observed woodenly, "if they believe us to be the Sky People…"

"They think we're the messengers of Dias," Leo said, finishing his brother's thought.

"They think we're angels?!" Naomi exclaimed.

An uncomfortable looking Diana nodded.

The Eight and her companions began to grow very unsettled by the humans' genuflecting when Diana's communicator chirped. The tall brunette drew her device from her jacket pocket and studied its view screen. "The centurions say a massive rain storm is blowing over our Heavy Raider at this moment. It'll get here soon so we probably should find some shelter."

"We probably should remain here then," Simon said.

"Agreed," the Three snapped, fully in command of the situation.

 _I see my sister's confidence has returned with a vengeance,_ Naomi mused to herself.

#

Things again began to move fast, Leo noted, as the now standing crowd of people motioned for his team to follow them into a large building. Once they crossed the threshold, he caught sight of a large table that was very low to the ground. Situated around the table top were a multitude of pillows while on the long wooden slab were many dishes that contained bread, meats, fruits, and cuisine that reminded him of something out of the royal Virgon court from a thousand years ago.

The people led them toward the table and bade them to be seated. As Naomi took her seat on one of the pillows, several young men rushed to serve her. Suddenly, the young man who she'd given the ration bar back at the mine snapped at the other boys. As they backed away from his obvious displeasure, he turned back to the Eight, smiled brightly, and poured a drink into a simple goblet for her.

Leo grinned and said to his sister, "Naomi, don't look now, but I think lover boy just called dibs on you."

When she narrowed her eyes at him, his grin broadened.

#

An hour later, after the meal was completed, the elder women in the hall rose from their pillows and congregated around Leo. Suddenly, they gently grabbed him and started to whisk him away. When he saw his sisters reach for their weapons, he signaled to both of them with his eyes to stand down. He wanted to see how this played out. Besides, they weren't really in any danger. The base star in orbit had four emergency resurrection vats online with replacement bodies for the members of the landing party ready and waiting. So, he put up a token resistance and allowed the chattering women to guide him into a bedroom in another part of the building.

Once they threw him onto the bed, they removed his jacket and shirt, washed his torso using cloths soaked in a basinet, brushed his teeth with a plant that had a minty taste, and combed his hair.

When they finished their task, they bowed to him and rapidly exited the room.

For several minutes, he sat quietly on the bed wondering what in the frak was going on in this strange place. Then he heard the sound of soft footsteps outside the door.

When the crude wooden door swung open, Leo saw a woman standing there. She wore her dark curly hair like a crown on her head and her coif complimented her dark eyes and bow-shaped lips. Her slight frame was cloaked within a pure white robe made out of thin material. He studied her while she did the same before he recalled that she'd been the one who'd brought them water at the mine and had escorted him to the settlement.

Now Leo believed he was as devout and pious as any Two. However, even he had to admit that seeing this innocent-looking, beautiful young woman standing there where the light from the hall revealed the shadows of her lovely curves through her ethereal robe was almost too much for most males, human or Cylon, to resist.

Then, without uttering a sound, she stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and faced him. A moment or two passed as she appeared to gather her courage before she gazed resolutely into his eyes and shrugged the robe from her shoulders. When the garment pooled at her feet, she faced him, completely nude, yet standing proud and regal, holding her head high like a queen.

Although he ached to touch her, to hold her, something didn't feel right about this. Then it hit him. "You," he struggled to speak because his throat was dry. "You're a gift for me, a gift for one of the Sky People."

She said nothing. She simply peered at him.

Leo shook his head, stood up, and approached her cautiously. She never flinched; she simply continued to regard him with courageous eyes. Then he knelt before her and lifted the robe off the floor, careful not to touch her inappropriately. He drew the robe over her shoulders and said softly, "Please, you don't have to do this. You don't have to sacrifice your innocence to me."

She blinked furiously and appeared to be confused as he led her to the door and opened it into the hallway where he was greeted by the town elder and puzzled looking Diana. When the old man saw the girl precede him out into the hall, Leo saw the look of terror on the man's face moments before the elder flung himself down onto the floor.

As the old man quaked in fear, Leo noticed that several other men who stood nearby looked at him as if he was the Angel of Death himself.

At that moment he finally had realized that these people weren't in the grip of some silly superstition concerning a nonexistent Lord of Kobol. Whatever had frightened them was both terrifying and real. Every Cylon knew that kind of fear. After all, that's how slaves felt when their masters wielded the power of life and death over them.

He could tell his brother and sisters about his insight later. Right now, though, he had to salvage the situation and keep it from turning into a clusterfrak of epic proportions!

Suddenly, Leo plastered a big smile on his face and announced, "Hey…um everybody? Look everything's fine. We're good here…really. Er…we'll just go back inside now, okay? Okay!" he chirped brightly. Then he quickly took the young woman's hand and gently drew her back into the bedroom.

Once inside, he closed the door behind them and led her over to the bed. Then he indicated that she should sit on the edge of the divan while he looked for all the world like a deer caught in the headlights.

Once she was seated, she quietly regarded him as he sat down as well, careful to keep a respectful distance between them. At first, he didn't know what to do. Then he decided to try and communicate with the young woman.

"Leo," he said, as he pointed to himself.

She gave him a puzzled look for several moments before she parroted back to him, "Leo."

"That's good," he said with a gentle smile. He pointed to himself again and repeated, "Leo." Then he pointed to her.

She appeared to comprehend what he desired from her. She now pointed to herself, graced him with a generous smile and whispered, "Airla."

He smiled. "Airla," he breathed. "That is a very lovely name."

#


End file.
